Use our virtual trade currency called Trade Dollars to purchase anything you want within the exchange. Our Trade Dollars are equivalent to the value of the Canadian Dollar. Our members are asked to price their products and services within the exchange at fair market value. This means you pay exactly the same amount for the offered goods and services as you would in the cash world. The only difference is, you now have the ability to buy things at a discount or at your own cost of doing business!
Debts in the wir currency, assigned the same value as the Swiss franc, could be paid with sales to any member of the bartering circle: if a baker needed to “purchase” eggs and flour from a farmer, the baker could pay off the debt by “selling” baked goods to another wir member. The farmer, in turn, could use his newly acquired credit to “buy” his own needed items or services. Despite a bank-led campaign to discredit the system, wir stuck. Today, it has more than 60,000 business participants and does the equivalent of about $4.4 billion in annual trade.
It helped that she had something other people wanted. “If I had gone in and offered to bake a pie for a free night at their hotel,’ they’d probably have said ‘no.’ ” One Barter Babe, Carly Boyce, knitted Simmons an exact replica of a favourite hat Simmons had lost but luckily had a picture of herself wearing. When it came time for the trade, Boyce remembers feeling guilty because the hat was so easy for her to make, and she told Simmons so. Simmons laughed: it was incredibly easy, she told Boyce, for her to give financial advice. It was a funny conversation, Boyce says, but also one that gets at the essence of bartering: when money is taken out of the equation, value is a moving, customizable concept—and that’s just the way most barterers like it.
Since the 1830s, barter in some western market economies has been aided by exchanges which use alternative currencies based on the labour theory of value, and which are intended to prevent profit-taking by intermediaries. Examples include the Owenite socialists, the Cincinnati Time store, and more recently[when?] Ithaca HOURS (time banking) and the LETS system.
Barter Network Ltd. is a proud member of The International Reciprocal Trade Association, IRTA, which is a non-profit organization committed to promoting just and equitable standards of practice and operation within the Modern Trade and Barter and other Alternative Capital Systems Industry, by raising the awareness and value of these processes to the entire Global Community. IRTA provide all Industry Members with an ethnically based global organization, dedicated to the advancement of Modern Trade and Barter and other Alternative Capital Systems, through the use of education, self-regulation, high standards and government relations. The Board of IRTA consists of Key Players in the Barter Industry, With Patti Falus President of Barter Network Ltd. being the only Canadian who sits on the Board.
Making an eXmerce sale is no different from a cash or credit card sale except for the form of payment. Once a member is identified as an eXmerce member and it comes time to make the sale, you simply accept your new customer’s eXmerce card as payment. The eXmerce dollars will immediately be transferred into your account for you to purchase from any other member.
The Owenite socialists in Britain and the United States in the 1830s were the first to attempt to organize barter exchanges. Owenism developed a "theory of equitable exchange" as a critique of the exploitative wage relationship between capitalist and labourer, by which all profit accrued to the capitalist. To counteract the uneven playing field between employers and employed, they proposed "schemes of labour notes based on labour time, thus institutionalizing Owen's demand that human labour, not money, be made the standard of value."[16] This alternate currency eliminated price variability between markets, as well as the role of merchants who bought low and sold high. The system arose in a period where paper currency was an innovation. Paper currency was an I.O.U. circulated by a bank (a promise to pay, not a payment in itself). Both merchants and an unstable paper currency created difficulties for direct producers.

Jump up ^ Homenatge A Catalunya II (Motion Picture). Spain, Catalonia: IN3, Universita Oberta de Catalunya, Creative Commons Licence. 2010. Retrieved 2011-01-15. A documentary, a research, a story of stories about the construction of a sustainable, solidarity economics and decentralized weaving nets that overcome the individualization and the hierarchical division of the work, 2011.

The same thing holds true of all other possessions; for barter, in general, had its original beginning in nature, some men having a surplus, others too little of what was necessary for them: hence it is evident, that the selling provisions for money is not according to the natural use of things; for they were obliged to use barter for those things which they wanted; but it is plain that barter could have no place in the first, that is to say, in family society; but must have begun when the number of those who composed the community was enlarged: for the first of these had all things in common; but when they came to be separated they were obliged to exchange with each other many different things which both parties wanted.
Although, as a general case, a ship unlucky in falling in with whales continues to cruise after them until she has barely sufficient provisions remaining to take her home, turning round then quietly and making the best of her way to her friends, yet there are instances when even this natural obstacle to the further prosecution of the voyage is overcome by headstrong captains, who, bartering the fruits of their hard-earned toils for a new supply of provisions in some of the ports of Chili or Peru, begin the voyage afresh with unabated zeal and perseverance.
I see a LOT of potential when it comes to locally owned businesses but it’s really a shame to see them open the beginning of May and by November they’re already closed (and they’re in locations I’d LOVE to be at when things start taking off – Dundas between Jarvis and Mutual for example) – same old crap still comes and goes though. Bartering doesn’t mean you’re being taken or taking someone ‘for a ride’ – it’s how small town downtowns survive and in many ways we can learn from that. When a customer likes what you provide they trust your judgment and are likely to check out that juice bar two doors down if you’re promoting it. The key to get back our stable neighbourhoods – I’m looking at us, Downtown East – is the commitment to hanging in there and helping each other out. When you’re doing your own business you know it’s not just a 40 hour workweek – it’s all the time. Any chance we can take to promote not just our business but what we love doing…as well as being happy to see neighbouring businesses do well…makes all this hard work worth it.
This sort of scenario was so undesirable that societies must have created money to facilitate trade, argues Smith. Aristotle had similar ideas, and they’re by now a fixture in just about every introductory economics textbook. “In simple, early economies, people engaged in barter,” reads one. (“The American Indian with a pony to dispose of had to wait until he met another Indian who wanted a pony and at the same time was able and willing to give for it a blanket or other commodity that he himself desired,” read an earlier one.)
Making an eXmerce sale is no different from a cash or credit card sale except for the form of payment. Once a member is identified as an eXmerce member and it comes time to make the sale, you simply accept your new customer’s eXmerce card as payment. The eXmerce dollars will immediately be transferred into your account for you to purchase from any other member.
While Swapsity trades are facilitated online, its participants can be seen in real life at themed in-person swap meets as well as the annual Live Green Toronto Festival. Over the past three years, more than 25,000 items—primarily clothes, books, CDs and DVDs—have been swapped at its events, collectively saving people roughly $200,000. About 5,000 items have been donated to charity. On average, each participant saves $80 at every swap (the value of items they go home with and would have otherwise bought). This year’s Live Green event was packed despite the grey July weather: until it started to rain heavily in the late afternoon, lineups to get into the six swapping tents spanned the full length of the waiting area, then folded in on themselves like accordions. Even in the rain, the leaking tents bustled.

Since the 1830s, direct barter in western market economies has been aided by exchanges which frequently utilize alternative currencies based on the labor theory of value, and designed to prevent profit taking by intermediators. Examples include the Owenite socialists, the Cincinnati Time store, and more recently Ithaca HOURS (Time banking) and the LETS system.

To try a time bank, search online for one in your local area using TimeBanks.org. How time banks are managed varies according to the region, so it is important (and often mandatory) to attend an initial meeting that explains the general rules of your local chapter. Once you do this, you’re ready to start trading away. Your services and contacts are identified through the local time bank website.
Debts in the wir currency, assigned the same value as the Swiss franc, could be paid with sales to any member of the bartering circle: if a baker needed to “purchase” eggs and flour from a farmer, the baker could pay off the debt by “selling” baked goods to another wir member. The farmer, in turn, could use his newly acquired credit to “buy” his own needed items or services. Despite a bank-led campaign to discredit the system, wir stuck. Today, it has more than 60,000 business participants and does the equivalent of about $4.4 billion in annual trade.